


Repredict the Hourglass

by sea_level



Series: Extended AUgust [1]
Category: Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Divination, Getting Together, M/M, Magic, POV Third Person, kind of, technically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:48:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25013449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sea_level/pseuds/sea_level
Summary: After the war, Nick moves to New York to practice divination.
Relationships: Nick Carraway/Jay Gatsby
Series: Extended AUgust [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1811098
Comments: 3
Kudos: 37
Collections: AUgust 2020





	Repredict the Hourglass

**Author's Note:**

> AUgust in July because the discord server said why not.  
> Day 1 - Fantasy AU  
> See: [AUgust](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/AUgust_2020/profile)
> 
> Yes it's 2 AM. Yes I wake up for work in 5 hours. Yes I have regrets. But I've been thinking about this for days and was like. Why _not_ now?

Gatsby’s mansion is—and perhaps even Gatsby himself—an impressive feat of illusory magic. Hell, it was so good that Nick himself, a man who’s been _trained_ to see through glamors, didn’t even notice it until he was half in love with the man.

In his defense, the illusions didn’t ever add in anything that wasn’t there before. It was a brilliant tactic. The mansion, the pool, the people, the alcohol, they were all real, but, with Gatsby’s magic, they became...better. Alluring, intoxicating, glowing with ethereal light, quite almost too good to be true. Similar to the fae feasts Nick’s mom had warned him away from when he was younger.

Nick’s met very few people with any kind of large scale illusory abilities, but Gatsby is, by far, the greatest he’s ever met. Even across the Sound, all the way in Tom’s mansion, the illusion sticks, white marble glowing in the night like a hallowed entryway to some forgotten realm of heaven.

It’s very likely Nick would never have known it was an illusion at all were it not for the brief moment that the illusion slipped. And it did slip, if just for a second, after Daisy had left Gatsby’s party with Tom, and, in that second, Gatsby’s grand old mansion looked just a little wearier and the partygoers a little less enthusiastic. Perhaps Gatsby himself looked a bit more tired, but, if he did, Nick failed to notice.

* * *

“I hear that you’re in New York to take part in the divination economy,” Gatsby says over tea one day. They’re in Nick’s house, which in itself is a rare occasion.

“That’s not entirely incorrect,” Nick says, bringing his cup to his lips to mask his surprise. Gatsby had never taken a particular interest in the parts of Nick’s life that occurred in his absence, and Nick had never particularly cared to bring them up.

“Tell me, Old Sport,” Gatsby says, a smile playing on his face, “do we have another World War looming on the horizon?”

“That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?” Nick says, twisting the ward ring on his left pointer finger. “I doubt I’d be the one to determine such a thing, should someone reach a definitive answer on the subject.”

“Do you not take pride in your work?” Gatsby asks.

Nick shrugs. “Divination is tricky business. While the past may be set in stone, hardly the same thing can be said about the future. If I look and I see five futures, I must then reason, with no magical intervention, which of these is the most logical, and that’s far from a guarantee of outcome.”

“So it’s little more than an educated guess?”

“The magic lets me see beyond what any person could, but it’s a learned magic for me. A natural would do better, have fewer but more precise visions.”

“Divination isn’t your natural magic?” Gatsby asks.

Nick shakes his head. “My family—we imbue items with magic, enchant them, whatever.” He gestures towards the slate by the door, an intricate pattern carved into the stone. “That protection charm for instance. These rings. But after the war, I wanted to do something different. Something _more_.”

“So you came to New York for divination.”

“That I did.”

Gatsby smiles his patented Gatsby smile, the one that still never fails to take Nick’s breath away. “And what, would you say, does my future hold?”

Nick stands up to grab his case of divination stones. They’re smooth, featureless, and uniformly gray all over, each of them flattened ovals about the size of an egg. They’re the perfect size for fitting in the palm of one’s hand. Nick crafted them himself, found it easiest to start divining using familiar tools.

Divination is such a diverse field these days. There’s little by way of standardized practice anymore, especially when it comes to channeling power. Whatever your background was in, that was your starting point. This was simply Nick’s.

Nick takes a stone in each hand, crosses his hands at the wrist, and places them on the table between them. “Right on my right,” Nick instructs, “left under my left.”

Gatsby complies, and, with their hands clasped together properly with only the stones between them, Nick closes his eyes and lets the power flow.

Silence. Nothing. But then—

_Gatsby and Daisy lounging in bed. Gatsby shines like the sun. Daisy smiles but there is tragedy lurking beneath Her surface._

_Gatsby’s father in the rain. He turns to Nick. Says something. He’s proud, but the signs of His mourning shine through His brave veneer._

_Gatsby drinks. A toast. To something new. The other faces at the table are blurry. Nick can’t make any of them out._

_The water of the Sound is infinite and unforgiving. He is dragged under, but He does not struggle._

_Where is it? Where is it? A knock on the door. A flash of fear. The police. The shuffling of paper. I swear I put it around here somewhere._

_A midnight train. It’s snowing outside and the train has stalled on the tracks. The cabin is warm, and They have plenty of time._

Nick forces his eyes open.

“What did you see?” Gatsby asks.

“Too many things,” Nick says, trying to make sense of it all. “You have a great many important choices ahead of you.”

“That would make sense,” Gatsby says. “Everything that I’ve worked for is coming together.”

Nick swallows. It makes his next sentence harder to say. “I think you should leave New York.”

“I can’t,” Gatsby says.

Nick swallows again. It feels like there’s something stuck in his throat. “I know.” He tries to shake whatever odd feeling has grabbed ahold of him. “You should.”

“I can’t,” Gatsby repeats.

“I know,” Nick answers despite himself, but his brain and his body don’t seem to be working in tandem because he leans across the table and presses his lips firmly to Gatsby’s own. “Please leave New York,” he whispers. “I’ll follow.”

Gatsby stares at him for a great many seconds. “Okay,” he says. “I will.”

Nick releases him and the stones clatter to the table. Time seems to stop in that second and they both stare at them, unable to look away.

“Did you see this in your visions?” Gatsby asks just before the silence becomes unbearable.

Nick shakes his head. “I didn’t.”

“If you did it again,” Gatsby asks, “would you see something different?”

Nick’s gaze wanders back to the stones. They’re inert now, completely powerless until he can get the chance to charge them again.

“I imagine they might,” he says.

**Author's Note:**

> I stand by the classification of this as Urban Fantasy and not strictly a magic au because I used the word fae.
> 
> "million-dollar question" is anachronistic, but I can't bring myself to change it. i have...qualms.
> 
> nick as a diviner is based almost entirely off that one thing someone said once: "the stock market is just astrology for men". Yes, really.
> 
> title is a mishearing of the line "reaper tipped the hourglass" in "a moment of silence" by streetlight manifesto. this is my second misheard lyric title, but at least this time it isn't a smash mouth song. no judgement on smash mouth. early smash mouth has ska influences, and really you can't get better than that.
> 
> The prediction that is closest to being true in the "canon" of this story is, in fact, the midnight train, going anywhere.


End file.
